Software or IT systems are commonly used to perform complex processes such as business processes. Such software systems are often coupled with process monitoring systems arranged to monitor process events within the processing performed by the software system. The process events may be used to calculate a set of performance measures in the form of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The KPIs are then presented to the administrators or managers of the software system via monitor interfaces provided by the monitoring system. The set of KPIs for a process, such as a business process, may be used to provide an indication of the performance of the business process against predetermined performance targets. Such monitoring systems can be referred to as Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) systems.
In many such process monitoring systems, the software system being monitored is often able to generate many more process events than are required by the process event monitoring infrastructure for monitoring the performance of the system. Therefore, system administrators typically configure the process monitoring system so as to limit the generated process events to those required by the current set of monitor interfaces. As individual monitors for given KPIs are added, modified or removed from the monitoring system, the set of required process events is also changed and may become out of step with the set of process events actually generated by the software system being monitored. Often, more process events are generated than are actually used by the monitoring system. Generating process events is expensive, in performance terms, for the software system. Therefore, in order to maintain the efficiency of the software system, the set of generated process events requires complex and expensive maintenance.